Are pure physical attack builds even a thing?

I've been thinking about doing a straight puncture build come Ascendancy.

Projectile and vulnerability curse for damage and bunch of more multipliers for projectiles on supports. There won't be any space for Hatred or Added Fire, and since I'm trying to scale bleed I don't really care about that either.

I might not though, I'm getting a little tired of always playing multicurse builds that can't play in parties because other players' curses overwrite mine or vice versa.

it really does all come down to the aura. If pure phys is ever going to be a generally big thing then we need a 50% aura that scales phys to a level that results in similar damage to hatred. Added fire is a sometimes gem, ele heralds are sometimes, but Im always using hatred on a phys build, unlike the gems theres no alternative. Added fire is amazing but so is phys on full life, pcoc, crit multi, conc, all these other damages I can chose from.

if theres ever a full phys build i can see gladiator taking top spot for it. you could easily get upwards of 40-50% chance to cause bleed on hit with attacks, and 30% chance to cause maim against bleeding enemies, then bleeding enemies explode for 20% of their max hp as physical damage? yeah that sounds pretty nice to me

The problem with chance to bleed is that it's straight worse than the 100% bleed options. Disfavour is a bit expensive but as an end-game option it's the gold standard. Puncture is also a thing, particularly because it can be supported by less duration and the double-dipped more multiplier that brings.

Even if you're interested in bleed ad a utility buff to a main bloodlust skill, you don't want to use your support two or three times to get the bleed applied, you want to use it once and move to your main damage skill.

Bleed is in a really weird place right now. There's a ton of ways to make it a small support effect, but if you're running bleed you either want it to be 90% of your damage or you want to be able to quickly and easily proc it 100% of the time.

you can get 100% chance to bleed options all you want, doesn't matter IMO. the point is when the mob is bleeding you can get 'Maim'.

just interesting fact that Gladiator can get huge amounts of chance to bleed (upwards of 60% really) without too much investment. so if there are better options than using puncture/weapons that offer 100% chance, you're not losing a whole lot. if you need to attack something 2-3 times, which im sure you do anyway, you'll get a bleed. attack 2-3 more times you'll get a maim...whatever that is.

i do agree that bleed is in a weird place right now. im not really interested in it for any melee characters to be honest. seems to really defeat the purpose. what im interested in is 'maim'. Assassin, since the buffs, looks like it'll be in a great spot to really stack DoT effects like poison, bleed, maim, even ignite.

for some reason i feel like theres going to be a lot of power and builds taking full advantage of stacking DoT effects

Main only reduces movement speed, right? Doesn't seem very useful for melee builds.

There's a reason for the current state of things. Way back when, elemental builds were king, Avatar of Fire was overpowered, and physical was garbage. The devs wanted to help physical builds, but leech was designed to be in short supply, and only scaled with physical damage. The devs wanted to boost physical damage, but didn't want leech values to get too high. So they added auras that gave extra elemental damage as percentage of Physical. That improved physical builds without improving their leech.

However, now that there are a lot more ways to get leech, and those original design goals are no longer relevant, but the game is built on those old decisions and can't be easily changed.

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gilrad wrote:

Bleed is in a really weird place right now. There's a ton of ways to make it a small support effect, but if you're running bleed you either want it to be 90% of your damage or you want to be able to quickly and easily proc it 100% of the time.

True that. I'd love for chance to bleed stats to always be accompanied by some side buffed like increased bleed rate or increased duration to incentivizes either having a reason for less than 100% chance, or offering a benefit that would force 100% builds to have wasted extra chance.

Sadly, it's a lot easier to go physical caster, and just Bladefall everything

It's too bad bleed doesn't stack, like poison. If you think about it, getting cut twice should make you bleed more. Right now, only the largest bleed counts, so you need a hefty attack to get a significant bleed.

I'd like to see it stacking, and try a Jack the Axe Cyclone build, "Death by a Thousand Cuts", but of course doing that would leave bleed open to abuse from every other skill in the game.